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Peter, this is a fantastic video of the sculpt. I love creature work, and try to do creature work myself, I respect your skills. I mean no disrespect when I ask this, why did you choose to paint the face black and cover up all that fantastic color work you had on the head? The black beak looks great, if you did a high contrast black shadow across the face would you have achieved a similar effect? How did you mix the glossy black beak with the other matte colors on the head in Zbrush?

Hey Sean;
I know what you mean about covering up detail. My attitude is that that's how nature works sometimes. If this thing evolved naturally, who knows what would lead to a particular coloration. It's crazy looking but it's supposed to be a natural creature, not one that was hand made and decorative. Once you start fawning over your details to show off how hard you've worked, things can get a little precious. My feeling is that if you suggest detail that isn't obvious on first glance, it can draw the viewer in and give them the pay off of additional discovery. Like looking at the emperor scorpion I used to have as a pet. From a couple feet away it's just shiny and black, but the closer you get there's so much more going on. Also, if you're designing for a film or game there's the graphic qualities to consider. When you pull back to the average view you're going to have, does it read well? If I enhance every aspect of the shape and pull back, it can sometimes look noisy and confusing. On this particular guy, I just liked the read I got from a distance. Good question though.

As far as material blending, there's a setting in the render options to blend matcaps. I just masked off cavities and sprinkled plastic toy matcap over the duller stuff.